GIS Unit - Conservation Assessment Tools (CAT)

The Conservation Assessment Tools (CAT) is an extension to ArcView that provides a suite of tools designed to produce rapid conservation assessments.

CAT example

These tools are to be used with specimen data or sighting data in latitude and longitude and have been primarily designed to work with herbaria data which provides an important source of data relevant for Red List assessments. The tools follow the IUCN Red Listing guidelines, and produce estimates of Area of Occupancy (AOO), Extent of Occurrence (EOO), number of subpopulations, number of locations and indicators of fragmentation.

The CAT extension can be linked directly to data stored in BRAHMS databases (Botanical Research And Herbarium Management System). For users of BRAHMS, the improved mapping function enables botanical data with coordinates to be linked to ArcView projects set up with CAT. Conservation assessment results can then be imported straight back into BRAHMS projects, linking to taxon information. A short guide describing the process can be downloaded here.

Most of the algorithm and analysis in CAT are now available online though the GeoCAT tool.

For more details see

Willis, F., Moat, J. & Paton, A. (2003). Defining a role for herbarium data in Red List assessments: a case study of Plectranthus from eastern and southern tropical. Biodiversity and Conservation 12: 1537-1552.
CAT - ArcView 3.3 Extension
Documentation for using CAT in ArcView
Documentation for linking CAT with BRAHMS

Use the GeoCAT tool